Twitter has threatened Meta with legal action following the spectacular debut of Meta’s new Twitter rival, Threads, in arguably the clearest indication yet that Twitter perceives the app as a competitive threat.
On Wednesday, an attorney for Twitter filed a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the firm of stealing trade secrets by employing former Twitter employees.
Semafor was the first to report on the letter. A source close to the situation confirmed the letter’s veracity to CNN.
The letter, sent by Alex Spiro, an outside lawyer for Twitter founder Elon Musk, accused Meta of “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
Musk responded to the letter reports by tweeting, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
According to the letter, Meta hired former Twitter employees who “improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices,” and Meta “deliberately” involved these individuals in the development of Threads.
“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights,” Spiro continued, “and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information.”
Andy Stone, a Meta spokeswoman, categorically ignored the letter. “There isn’t a single former Twitter employee on the Threads engineering team,”
In the months since Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter, the social network has faced competition from a rising number of smaller microblogging services, including the decentralized social network Mastodon and Bluesky, an alternative funded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. However, neither Twitter nor Facebook has threatened legal action.
